London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

If an alien’s sole experience of humanity were watching British current affairs programmes, they might suppose women make up about 30 per cent of our population.

If they tuned in only to the Today programme, perhaps a fifth. And if they were unfortunate enough just to see Mock the Week, they might think women didn’t exist at all. This alien might also suspect our society was operating a Logan’s Run initiative, where women — only women — were carted off to the knacker’s yard as soon as wrinkles set in.

Speaking to the Evening Standard this week, former Radio 4 newsreader Alice Arnold talked about this sexist-ageist horror-combo: “You look at men of a certain age or appearance who are on TV and think, ‘If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be there’.”

She’s right. An octogenarian female making dire puns next to a model-esque man half her age? That would never happen. And yet on Strictly Saturdays, the BBC serves up the reverse.

The corporation is at least doing something to address the paucity of women on its shows, holding a training day next week for female experts. There’s clearly demand: more than 2,000 women applied for 30 places.

The problem is bigger than just a broadcasting bias, though. What we see on TV inevitably reflects the wider male dominance of public life. But it is also symptomatic of the way children are brought up: while a bragging boy may be applauded for his confidence, girls are often taught not to be too gobby about their opinions or talents. And men — especially those from top public schools — usually seem better trained in the arts of blagging and bullshitting, too. Perhaps they are better at forgetting that you are only ever a brain-fade away from a lifetime of YouTube derision.

A few of my friends work on well-known politics programmes. They say women are less likely to agree to come on as guests. Childcare is clearly a part of that, but sometimes women try to talk producers out of their invitation — they don’t know anything about economics perhaps, or the subject isn’t their precise specialism. This doesn’t happen with male panellists, apparently.

The Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore — whom I’d far rather see on TV than so many of the rent-a-gob males that get carted out — once explained why she hated appearing on such programmes: “Why put myself through a popularity contest that I never chose to enter?”

It also takes a thick hide to shrug off the vicious appearance-related invective women receive. I’ve never seen the “ugly” card used to invalidate a man’s opinion.

We shouldn’t be letting these idiots win, though. For I don’t want little girls to switch on the TV and ask, as I often do: “Where are the women?”

Onesies — the suits that guarantee celibacy

It was the moment I realised that the onesie pub crawl had become “a thing” that I gave up all hope for humanity. Then it emerged on Tuesday that Debenhams’ record Christmas sales were in part down to the giant romper suits. Some poor soul at the Times was even made to wear one to men’s fashion week.

Why anyone would take sartorial inspiration from a toddler is a puzzle, but I am belatedly realising a benefit of this trend. Amid all the stomach-turning talk of a Fifty Shades of Grey baby boom putting pressure on nurseries, the onesie should simultaneously provide a useful contraceptive effect. Wear one, and it would be a miracle if anyone ever wants to have sex with you again.

I’m afraid to shrink my Twitterverse

I have embarked on the clichéd January clear-out. The stack of papers is defeated. Emails deleted. Clothes that lingered unworn in drawers delivered to the charity shop. But there is one area where I am struggling to trim the fat: the people I follow on Twitter.

It should be simple. Anyone who has ever retweeted praise or wasted 140 characters on Take Me Out deserves to be in the ejector seat. And I would take a special pleasure in culling those who post pics from their beach holidays in January.

But what’s stopping me is the brutality of the unfollow button, particularly when I often give bad tweet myself. And since I see some of these people offscreen, I fear the awkward moments when we next meet, both aware of my mini-betrayal.

My only hope is to blame Twitter’s unfollow bug, which ditches people from your feed at random. As Voltaire said of God, if it didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Please Twitter’s engineers: never fix it.

Famine stalks the city streets

On Tuesday night, I went to the Lion and Unicorn theatre in Kentish Town to see a new play, Impotent (very funny but, as the title suggests, perhaps not a first-date type of excursion).

Leaving at around 10pm, the only places still serving food seemed to be Maccy D’s and Chicken Cottage, so we ended up schlepping down to Goodge Street for Icco’s ever-reliable pizza. A few days earlier, the Wagamama by the Tower of London had turfed us out a little after 9pm. Much as I love London, why must we be the city that sleeps so much?